From vectors to PSD files, icons and stock photos, Freepik provides resources for graphic and web design. As of August 2015, the site has received more than 440 million downloads. Developed by “a team of designers, developers, professionals of marketing, communication and administration” based in Spain, Freepik offers two types of content: free and exclusive graphic resources by Freepik, and graphic resources belonging to others. Users can search or browse by categories.
According to their Annual Report 2014, the Philadelphia Museum of Art contains about 227,000 works of art in their collections. More than 100,000 images are made available through their digital collection. Users can search by keywords, artist, country of work and curatorial departments.
The collection of Walters Art Museum contains thousands of art works from the third millennium B.C to the 20th century, ranging from mummies to arms and armor, from old master paintings to Art Nouveau jewelry around the globe and across ages. Through their online collections, users can search or browse images in several ways, which include category, date, creator, medium and tags. Users can also login using their Facebook account to create their own online collections.
The images on this site are contributed by Superfamous Studio, a design agency led by Dutch designer Folkert Gorter.
The Cleveland Museum of Art houses close to 45,000 objects that span across 6,000 years. Their online collection provides access to close to 34,800 images. Users can search or browse by various collections, creators and types.
Callisphere is “the University of California’s free public gateway to a world of primary sources”. Powered by the California Digital Library (CDL), the platform currently have more than 230,000 images, contributed by 139 archives, libraries, museums, and historical societies in California. Users may search or explore the images across different themes or topics.
Provided by web design agency, IM Creator Ltd., IM Free Collections is “a curated collection of free web design resources”. The images are from various image sources that provided these images on Creative Commons licenses. Users can search or browse by various categories.
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is “a consortium of natural history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as a part of a global ‘biodiversity commons'”. Started in 2011, the staff of BHL began to upload illustrations from books in their collections. These illustrations were created over the past 500 years. To date, more than 98,000 of natural history and botanical illustrations have been uploaded to their Flickr account.
The Whitney Museum of American Art houses a comprehensive range of “twentieth-century and contemporary American art, with a special focus on works by living artists”. Their digital collection provides access to more than 21,000 artworks from more than 3,000 artists. Users can search or browse by artist.
VADS is an “online resource for visual arts”. Over 12 years, VADS built a portfolio of visual art collections, which comprise of “over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK”. These collections were contributed by various institutions in the UK. Through the site, users can search or browse by collections and themes. VADS also provides a series of resources that were built around the image collections by “specialist authors and lecturers”.
This database offers access to high resolution images from the Folger Shakespeare Library, including books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, and art. It is a good resource to explore more about the culture, people, art, costumes and fashion design during (or under the influence) of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). To date, the database contains more than 90,000 images. Users can show multiple images side-by-side, zoom in and out, view cataloging information when available, export thumbnails in various sizes, and construct persistent URLs linking back to items or searches.
The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery are the Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art. Together, both galleries holds “some of the most important holdings of Asian art in the world”, with Asian-inspired American art and contemporary art in Asia. More than 40,000 objects are available online. Users can search or browse by object type, topic, name, place and date.
Started more than 30 years ago by Cartography Associates, the David Rumsey Map Collection “focuses on rare 16th through 20th century maps of North and South America, as well as maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania”. The collection includes “atlases, wall maps, globes, school geographies, pocket maps, books of exploration, maritime charts, and a variety of cartographic materials including pocket, wall, children’s, and manuscript maps”. Their digital collection contains more than 61,000 images, where users can search or browse by types, locations and periods. The website also provides many ways to view the map collections, such as Luna Browser, Georeferencer, Google Earth, etc. Learn more about the evolution of the physical collection into the online collection here.
Created and curated by Atle Mo, Subtle Patterns is a free resource for textured patterns. Users can also purchase their plugin to use their resource directly from Adobe Photoshop.
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco houses more than 18,000 objects ranging from “tiny jades to monumental sculptures”. From the “earliest dated Chinese Buddha image to the contemporary works”, their collections span across different cultures, dynasties, religions and geographies over 6,000 years. The museum provides more than 12,000 images in their online collection. Users can search or browse the collections by the different types of art.
The Art Institute of Chicago was founded as both a museum and school for fine arts around 1879. Today, it houses more than 300,000 works of art in their permanent collections, ranging from “Chinese bronzes to contemporary design and from textiles to installation art”. The digital collection contains more than 80,000 images, where you can search or browse by categories. The website also allows you to sign up for an account and make your own art collections by selecting artworks and adding notes about them. You can save your “collections” to revisit in the future or share them with your friends.
One of the oldest galleries in Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) houses more than 70,000 works of art. Their digital collection contains close to 59,000 images of Australian and international works of art. Users may search or browse by the different collection areas.
The Museu d’Art de Catalunya, or MNAC in short, is a national museum located in Barcelona, Spain. The museum is known for its outstanding collections of Romanesque mural paintings and Catalan Modernism. Their digital collection contains more than 8,500 images of artworks from their collections. Users can browse the collections, search and narrow the results by classification, themes and period.
LACMA houses more than 120,000 objects across different media, region and periods such as Greek, Roman and Etruscan art, Asian art, American and Latin American art, decorative arts and design, photography, and modern and contemporary art. The digital collections provide access to more than 53,000 images of artworks with more than 20,000 that LACMA believes to be in the public domain. Users can search and filter the results by artist, classification, curatorial area, periods and location.
Wellcome Images is one of the visual collections of the Wellcome Library. It contains themes ranging “from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and science”. To date, there are close to 130,000 images across different themes.